Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Taking Conservatives Seriously: A Moral Justification For Affirmative Action And Reparations, Kim Forde-Mazrui
Taking Conservatives Seriously: A Moral Justification For Affirmative Action And Reparations, Kim Forde-Mazrui
Kim Forde-Mazrui
Underlying the debate over affirmative action and reparations for black Americans is a dispute about the extent to which American society is responsible for present effects of past racial discrimination. Although much has been written on the subject, the scholarship too often sheds more heat than light, and tends to be dominated by extreme positions incapable of taking opposing claims seriously. This Article weighs in on this debate in a novel and constructive manner. The Article defends a societal obligation to remedy past discrimination by accepting, rather than dismissing, principles of conservatives who oppose affirmative action and reparations. Taking conservatives …
The Constitutional Implications Of Race-Neutral Affirmative Action, Kim Forde-Mazrui
The Constitutional Implications Of Race-Neutral Affirmative Action, Kim Forde-Mazrui
Kim Forde-Mazrui
This paper explores the constitutional implications of race-neutral affirmative action, i.e., governmental efforts to pursue affirmative action goals, such as remedying discrimination and promoting diversity, through non-racial means. For example, to increase minority enrollment, some public universities give weight in the admission process to economic background. This paper suggests that such "race-neutral" policies may be just as unconstitutional as racial preferences if they are motivated by arguably discriminatory (against whites) purposes. I then present two doctrinal defenses of race-neutral affirmative action. First, assuming that strict scrutiny would apply to such policies, I argue that remedying discrimination, even so-called "societal discrimination," …